I began my morning by reading a number of limericks. For me that’s the only proper way to start a day. I rooted through my book shelves and found what were the remains of a very small book of limericks published in 1980. It is a very small and was packed into the hardcovers with a rubber band. It fell to pieces as I began reading it. The book is titled Dirty Little Limericks and here is the first sentence in the forward which tells you all you need to know, “A good friend of mine – a practicing therapist – has advanced the thesis that the greatest contributions to human health and sanity in the last two hundred years is neither penicillin nor indoor plumbing, but rather the limerick.” I couldn’t agree more. Here are four for your enjoyment.
As you are aware I hunt like an obsessed bloodhound for topics that are a 7-9 on the weirdness scale. Fortunately for me all that weirdness has for some reason had little or no effect on me (I hope you are someone who doesn’t miss a satirical comment when you read it). Todays post will contain six blurbs about well-known people who were truly weirder than anyone ever imagined.
WALT WHITMAN
When American poet Walt Whitman died in 1892, his brain was put in a jar and donated to the University of Pennsylvania. The University doesn’t have it anymore because a clumsy lab technician dropped the jar on the floor and damaged the brain. The University quietly discarded it, and Whitman’s “Specimens Days” were over.
MARGARET WISE BROWN
American children’s author Margaret Wise Brown (1910 to 1952), who wrote many tender kitty-and-bunny tales, including Good Night Moonand The Bunnies Birthday, loved to hunt rabbits and she collected their severed feet as trophies.
VOLTAIRE
Voltaire always fainted whenever he smelled roses. He also drank seventy cups of coffee every day. Are the facts related, who knows?
EMILY DICKINSON
Poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) will’s final requests were that she would be buried in a white casket, that heliotropes be placed inside along with a posy of blue violets to be placed at her throat. All of her wishes were granted.
AGATHA CHRISTIE
Agatha Christie nearly pulled off a real-life hoax worthy of her mystery novels. Upset that her husband was leaving her for another woman, she set up an incriminating crime scene that almost got him arrested for “her murder”. Luckily for him, an employee at a distant seaside hotel saw news photos of Christie and recognized her as the woman who had slipped into their hotel under an assumed name. Although Christie claimed amnesia, the police were not amused after having wasted a week of searching rivers and bogs for her body.
⚱️⚱️⚱️
And last but not least goes to someone who finally discovered his true worth.
TUPAC SHAKUR
Requested that his ashes be mixed with marijuana and smoked by his friends in the band Outlawz.
I seem to be overflowing with accumulated trivia information these days and as I get it I’ll pass it along to you. Todays topics for review are all pop-culture related facts.
The famous quote “play it again Sam”, was never actually uttered in the movie Casablanca.
Though they look alike, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are fraternal twins, not identical.
John Lennon signed the paperwork formalizing the breakup of the Beatles while staying at a Disney World hotel.
Woody in Toy Story has a last name. It was revealed in 2009 as “Pride”.
In the movie Home Alone, the picture of Buzz’s girlfriend that Kevin finds is actually a boy in a wig.
During his performances of James Bond, Sean Connery always wore a wig.
The injuries on Luke Skywalkers face when he was attacked by the snow monster in The Empire Strikes Back were real.
Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t draw the sketch of Kate Winslet in Titanic . . . but director James Cameron did.
DC Comics boasts a superhero named Arms-Fall-Off-Boy.
2006’s Bond movie Casino Royale was the first Bond movie that could be watched in China.
BONUS FACT
(On everyone’s favorite character)
In the Star Wars Trilogy, George Lucas’s original full name for
Let’s talk about the subjects most people immediately shy away from: Death & Serious Injuries. They are a part of our lives (at least at the end) but still a rather gruesome topic for discussion. For years I loved reading about the endless stupid deaths reported by the Darwin Awards and found them sad but still a little humorous at times. My goal in life was never to be mentioned in the Darwin Awards by dying in a stupid fashion. I realize that’s an odd thing to have on a bucket list but it’s still on mine. Here are a few trivia tidbits (both old and new) that might interest you on deaths and serious injuries.
Boating accidents claim an average of 700 lives each year.
Since 1924, 13 people have been killed in Pamplona, Spain’s annual “Running of the Bulls”.
From 1982 to 1997, cheerleading accounted for 57% of the catastrophic injuries and fatalities among young female athletes.
From 1973 to 1975 there were 81 known fatalities from hang-gliding,
In the United States, at least seven fatalities and numerous severe injuries have been reported among bungee jumpers using a hot air balloons as a platform.
☠️☠️☠️
In 2007, 45 people were struck and killed by lightning in the United States, a quarter of them in or near water.
Each year about 50-70 confirmed shark attacks occur. 5-15 shark attack fatalities occur around the world.
There were 850 hunting accidents in this country in 2002, more than 10% of them were fatalities.
Once at the Middle Tennessee District Fair in Lawrenceburg, a 60-year-old woman was severely injured when she fell 30 feet from the top of Ferris wheel and landed on the spokes close to the center wheel axle.
Once a Washington, D.C. based study on the correlation between admissions to emergency rooms and outcomes from Washington Redskins football games showed that admissions of female victims of stabbings, gunshots, assaults, and other violence actually increases when the team wins.
I’m having a day of total confusion. The sun is shining brightly but the temperature remains in the forties. I desperately want to begin using the deck to relax and read a book but it’s hard when you’re wearing gloves and two layers of clothing. Now I’m back at the computer and deciding which limericks I’ll be using. There’s no theme to these limericks just five that tickled my fancy and I hope they do the same for you.
💥
There once was a son-of-bitch,
Neither clever, nor handsome, nor rich,
Yet the girls he would dazzle,
And screw to a frazzle,
And then ditch them, the son-of-bitch.
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There was a young girl from Berlin
Who was screwed by an elderly Finn,
Though he diddled his best,
And screwed her with zest,
She kept asking, “Hey, Pop, is it in?”
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There was a young man man from Dumfries
Who said to his girl, “If you please,
It would give me great bliss
If while playing with this,
You would pay some attention to these!”
💥💥💥💥
There was a young fellow named Goody
Who claimed that he wouldn’t, but would he?
If he found himself nude
With a gal in the mood,
The question’s not woody but could he?
❤️❤️❤️
And here’s a favorite for those avid readers out there.
Having served three years in the Army changed many things about me. I was introduced to many new experiences that I hope never to repeat and I learned a lot about myself both good and bad. While I wasn’t involved in any massive world wars I got a taste of its reality by my visits to Korea and Vietnam. This post isn’t meant to be about me but about war itself. Todays post contains a few odd and strange facts from the most destructive war this country has ever faced, The American Civil War, which pitted brother against brother and families against families. The most widely cited figure is 618,222 total deaths, with 360,222 Union deaths and 258,000 Confederate deaths. The war’s toll was so severe that if the same percentage of the U.S. population had died today, it would be equivalent to 6 million deaths. Enjoy . . .
Of the future members of the United States Supreme Court who were of fighting age during the civil war, seven were in uniform. Four fought for the Union: Oliver Wendell Holmes, John M. Harlan, William B. Woods, and Stanley Matthews. Three fought for the Confederacy: Edward D. White, Horace H. Lurton, and Lucius Q.C. Lamar.
Union privates were paid only $16.00, but the gold value of their pay was more than seven times greater than that of the Confederates.
Slaves in Virginia could be hired for $30.00 a month in 1863 – yet the pay for an Army private was $11.00 a month. Confederates pay finally increased to $18.00 a month the next year.
Of the 546 nuns known to have served as battlefield nurses, 289 were from Ireland, 40 from Germany, and 12 from France.
Firing on both sides was so inaccurate that soldiers estimated it took a man’s weight in lead to kill a single enemy in battle. A Federal expert said that each Confederate who was shot required 240 pounds of powder and 900 pounds of lead.
A young Confederate officer, Captain S. Isadore Guillet, was fatally shot on the same horse on which three of his brothers had been previously killed. With his final wish he willed the horse to his nephew as he died.
Years before the war Jesse Grant, father of Ulysses, lived and worked in the home of Owen Brown, whose small son, played noisily about the frontier homestead,. That boy grew up to be John Brown, the Abolitionist martyr who lit the fuse of the war.
The Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, classed by some historians as the war’s most able cavalry commander, had twenty-nine horses shot from under him in the course of the war. He survived to be the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
WAR IS TRULY HELL
(And as I also learned – Peacetime is a motherf**ker)
As a youngster I was easily impressed by just about everything. Being that impressionable had it’s pitfalls and Mae West was one of my first. She won me over with her outrageous sense of humor, her “I don’t give a shit” attitude, and that buxom body. I loved watching her short but outrageous appearances on TV and her movies with W.C. Fields were next level hysterical. She was also a well known comedian, singer, screenwriter, and playwright. She remained bawdy and outrageous well into her late eighties as she strutted her stuff and was always accompanied by two large muscular young men. She passed away on November 27, 1980 and the world lost a unique and exciting woman. Todays post is a short collection of some of her most colorful quotes and a few photos. I still miss the old girl.
“It’s not the men in your life that counts, it’s the the life in your men.”
“It’s better to be looked over than overlooked.”
“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”
“When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.”
“Good sex is like good bridge,. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.”
“Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”
“Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”
I think most of us consider ourselves “foodies”. People ridicule me at times because I claim foodiness but for them I haven’t got the experience with the more “la-de-dah” types of foods. It’s also their kind way of putting me in my place. They still don’t seem to realize it just gives me more interesting ammunition when writing this blog. Todays post will be ten trivia questions about food that are a little more difficult than usual. I’ll be challenging my foodie critics to score more than five correct answers. The real answers will be listed below. I hope you have fun with it and I also hope those snobby critics don’t.
What novelty salt shakers did publishing czar William Randolph Hearst have on the refectory table in the dining room of his San Simeon estate?
How many different animal shapes are there in the “Animal Crackers” cookie zoo?
Who said “Never eat more than you can lift”?
Who first developed frozen food?
In what country was the beverage we know as punch originate?
Drupes are a regular part of the American diet. What are they?
What was the name of the breakfast cereal Cheerios when it was first marketed 50 years ago?
What popular fruit was named after a papal estate outside Rome?
What was the first coffee sold in sealed tin cans in the United States?
What popular lunch and snack food did a St. Louis doctor develop in 1890 for patients requiring an easily digested form of protein?
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BONUS QUESTION
What food product was discovered because of a long camel ride?
🍓🥕🥒🍊🫐
Answers
Mickey & Minnie Mouse shakers, Eighteen, Miss Piggy, Clarence Birdseye in 1930, India, Succulent usually single-pitted fruit (plums, apricots, peaches almonds, and olives etc.), Cheerioats (the name was changed because of complaints from the Quaker Oats Co.), Cantaloupe (named after the popes summer residence), Chase & Sanborn 1879, Peanut Buter – Patented by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, BONUS – Cottage Cheese – The milk in a hot goatskin bag turned white and tasty.
Many years ago I came upon a book of poetry titled MIRACLES compiled in 1966 containing poems from English speaking children from around the world. Any time I’m feeling down or depressed I return to the poetry in that book. The name of the authors and their age will be listed at the time the poetry was collected. With luck the authors are now in their forties and fifties and I hope they’ve continued with their poetry writing. They’ll never know how much pleasure they’ve given me over the years. I hope you enjoy them as well.
For you millennials who may read this post I’m giving you fair warning. I’m a eighty year old man who wants to tell you a story that will be a little sappy and hopefully a little funny but everything will be true. And before you start reading and rolling your eyes at what I say remember that I was much like you (a millennial) in the wild and wacky 1960’s when almost everything was always out of control. At that time I perfected that eye roll you’re probably still using today. Being alive in the sixties was a “trip” to say the least. Free love, an over abundance of drugs, with Rock & Roll as our mantra. My best friend and I were in constant trouble from stealing booze and cigarettes from our parents to the occasional visits from state and local police. We thought we had all the answers but were kept from getting really crazy by my ever so vigilant parents. I had my first official date and fell in love immediately until we were sidetracked by both her parents and mine who squashed our love like a bug. Then I crashed my fathers new car resulting in more eye rolling and some serious ass kicking. I decided then that maybe college would be a good change to let me live my life my way. I mean, how right could my parents be, they were over forty years old and obviously had no clue about things. So, I headed off to college to start my next millennial adventure . . .
College wasn’t an adventure but it was very strange. I was just one knucklehead in a rather large group of other knuckleheads trying to adjust to a life of freedom without parents. My biggest problem was adjusting from my father’s strict rules for everything to having no rules at all. I drank way too much and chased young ladies way too much, and learned almost nothing. I cut classes, constantly overslept and was a miserable failure as a student. In my third year I dropped out without alerting my parents and spent the remainder of the money I’d saved entertaining roommates and other friends (mainly females). But the damn college just had to go and notify my parents that I was a no-show and OMG were they irate (another huge parental eye roll). I returned home as a failed millennial with no money, no job, and two parents who would never let me forget what an ass I’d become.
Lets skip ahead to my enlistment in the Army, my time as a state police officer in Pennsylvania , getting married, finishing my bachelors degree, to getting an upper level management job with a national corporation, and finally retiring from the State of Maine’s Judicial Branch. My point is that if I can survive my millennial years, so can you. Truthfully, if you think about it everyone has a millennial period at some time in their life. It’s also true that human beings seem compelled to give everyone and everything a nickname (usually derogatory). There’s the Boomers (that’s me), the Gen X’ers, Gen Y’ers, and hundreds of others. It’s all just so much bullshit. Just remember this important fact. In a few years many of you will marry and have children. What will their nicknames be when they hit their millennial years and begin to drive you absolutely crazy? Some thing you can look forward to. It’s called the “Circle of Life”. LOL
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